Frances Barkley
Eighteenth-century Seafarer
A BC BestSeller

"Cathy Converse brings Frances Barkley's eight year global sea adventure to life. . .A compelling story of love, determination, and adventure."
-Stephen R. Brown, award-winning author of The Company:
​The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Company.
"A rollocking true tale of love and the sea told without bravado by a most remarkable woman."
-R. Bruce Macdonald, author of Never Say P*g  and
​Sisters of the Ice
". . .at exactly 1:30 on the twenty-fourth day of November in 1786, we set sail on a voyage to places few had ever heard of. I had no idea what to expect. I had only been on a ship once before. . .As we let go of the mooring lines, I was both excited for the adventure that lay before us and sad, for I knew that it would be a very long time before I saw my family again. I stood at the railing watching first the people and then the land slowly fade into the distance as the tide carried us toward the great rolling waves of the open ocean."
Excerpted from Frances Barkley Eighteenth-century Seafarer (Heritage House Publishing, 2023)
Part 1                                                                                                             Part 2

Against the Current 

"Dramatic, thoroughly-researched . . . Read it for the fun of it, the history of it, and ask whether
​ today's feminists have done as much as this fair lady accomplished."
—Peter Warren, former host of Warren on the Weekend
The first book commemorating the remarkable life of Agnes Deans Cameron, British Columbia's first female principal, itinerant traveller, respected journalist, and one of the top 150 most significant individuals in the history of the province of BC
"Sleep does not come easily on this mid-June night. Agnes Deans Cameron and her niece Jessie Cameron Brown, also known as “The Kid,” are restive in their makeshift beds. The rain is relentless. Large droplets of water drip down the sides of their improvised shelter and seep into their clothing, making them feel even more miserable. They have not bathed or changed their clothes for the past four days. They nestle deeper into the ropes that serve as their bunk. Their campsite is the stern of a scow somewhere on the Athabasca River. It’s a ‘hot hole,’ Cameron says. To make matters worse, they are set upon by hordes of large, ferocious, dive-bombing mosquitoes. All night long they hear their incessant high-pitched buzzing as the females aim their needle-like proboscis at any exposed bits of skin in their search for blood."
The year was 1908, and Agnes and Jessie were following the route of the early explorers and fur traders who travelled down the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers to the Arctic Ocean. ​ In one short season, they would become the first European women to make the ten-thousand-mile journey down the Mackenzie River out to the Beaufort Sea and back. 
​
Excerpted from Against the Current: The Remarkable Life of Agnes Deans Cameron (TouchWood Editions, 2018)
Cathy Converse is a number-one, bestselling author with several books listed on the BC Bestseller List. She has been writing for over thirty years and has authored, co-authored, and co-edited seven books, numerous cover stories for magazines, articles for academic journals, and the occasional technical manual. Her fourth book, Following the Curve of Time: The Legendary M. Wylie Blanchet, was honoured as one of the top five books chosen for the BC Book Prizes' Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award in 2009 and Against the Current received an Honourable Mention for the Lieutenant Governor's Medal for Historical Writing. She is also the former chair of social sciences, was a faculty member in the Department of Sociology, and a founder of the women’s studies curriculum and ancillary programs at Camosun College. For her work in writing historical biography she has been named in Canadian Who’s Who.
​Cathy was raised in the sunshine of California and Hawaii but has spent her adult years living along the craggy, windswept shores of British Columbia. Using the ocean as her anchor, she spent much of her time surfing, white-water kayaking, canoeing, and sailing the coastline from Panama to Alaska.
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For Frances Barkley Eighteenth-century Seafarer  Contact Heritage House 
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